Do you clever fans into "deep politics" really believe that Atta was the "kingpin?"

If so, you've been hopsuckered.

- AC
•••••••
Copyright 1996 Haymarket Publishing Services Ltd
PR Week

January 26, 1996

LENGTH: 131 words

HEADLINE: Media: Medialink wins NBC exclusive

BODY: Medialink has been appointed as the exclusive provider of video news releases to Global Business 2000, the business television show which
launches this month on NBC's satellite services covering Asia and Europe.

The deal, struck with the show's US-based production company Economic
Television, will see Medialink provide the programme with any appropriate
VNRs' suitable for the show's business audience, said Medialink's vice
chairman David Davis.

The show's launch is part of NBC's revamp of its international programme
service and the formal launch of NBC Asia on 15 January.

NBC, which is already available in Europe through NBC Super Channel, has
launched both an entertainment station and a 24-hour news and business
station under the NBC Asia banner.

Copyright 1996 M2 Communications Ltd.
M2 PRESSWIRE

April 10, 1996

LENGTH: 209 words

HEADLINE: ECONOMIC TELEVISION

Millions view "WebCruise" on TV news as "JumpCity!" launches

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, CA

HIGHLIGHT: New primetime TV show about the Internet to debut

BODY: Millions of consumers this weekend watched a first-ever three minute feature news segment called "WebCruise!" which showcased three popular sites on the World Wide Web, bringing pictures of the wired revolution to watchers of network news.

"WebCruise was our way of testing the waters with TV news directors, who
really have a finger on the pulse of what people want. They jumped on this
story, and it really reinforces our belief that this is THE time to launch
our Primetime reality-based entertainment series about the Internet," stated
"JumpCity!" producer Daniel Hopsicker.

"We think the Internet's the biggest consumer phenomenon since the hula
hoop, and it clearly deserves a show conveying the gleeful fun and sheer joy
of 'cyberpilots' worldwide."

"WebCruise" will be a weekly feature, both going to satellite as news, and
playing as a segment on Global Business 2000, which airs on NBC internationally, as well as inflight on flagship carriers like United and USAir. Its designer to help consumers learn of great sites to access, and allow marketers to generate more traffic to their World Wide Web sites.

LONDON, December 1, 2003 - Former BBC broadcaster Lucy Hadfield has been appointed Managing Director of the international operations of Medialink Worldwide Incorporated (Nasdaq: MDLK), a global leader in providing news and media services for professional communicators, it was announced today. Joining Ms. Hadfield on the management team of Medialink in London is Bill Jones who was named Vice Chairman, a non-executive role.

The formation of a new management team represents a key step in the
implementation of Medialink's strategy to position itself for the growth of
its international business.

Ms. Hadfield, 42, brings a wide range of broadcast media and corporate
communications experience to her new role. After starting her professional
career with advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi in London, she moved into
the broadcasting industry by joining RTHK in Hong Kong. A BBC-trained
producer and presenter, she ascended to the position of Senior Program
Officer for BBC World Service and Radio Television Hong Kong, where she
supervised the quality of production, editorial content and commissioning of
primetime English language talk features. She held responsibilities in front
of and behind the cameras, producing and presenting investigative radio and
television programs for international syndication.

Following her broadcast career, Ms. Hadfield established TVCI, an
international brand experience company based in London, which designed and produced many of Europe's most successful millennium exhibitions for high profile clients including EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS, HSBC and the WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION. She was most recently head of business development with CROWN Business Communications, a leading London-based integrated communications company providing live events, video and internet-based solutions for FTSE 250 companies. ...

A MADCOW'S FAKE NEWS

"Groups like MEDIALINK (www.medialink.com/vnr.htm) prepare television
versions of corporate press releases and produce them in broadcast news
stylehttp://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=25

MEDIA JUNGLE
James Elford

VNR takes all

If you thought The Onion or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart were your best
sources of fake news, think again: the Bush administration is giving them
some tough competition, thanks to a "video news release" (VNR) in support of
its new medicare law that many critics say blurs the boundary between
advertising and propaganda.

The VNR, distributed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
puts what some might call a biased spin on the Bush administration's medical
plan. Sample scenes include a crowd cheering while Bush signs the law into
effect, and another where an elderly customer is told by a pharmacist that
the new law "helps you better afford your medications." "It sounds like a
good idea," says the customer, to which the pharmacist replies, "A very good
idea."

But this kind of blatant drum beating wouldn't be so bad, or unexpected, if
it weren't for the way it was packaged. Instead of being clearly marked as
an advertisement from the government, the piece was not only designed to
look like a news story, but the government even got the company that made
the video, Home Front Communications, to hire someone to portray a
journalist.

Karen Ryan, a freelance reporter/actor/public relations professional (her
title varies depending upon who you ask) read the script prepared by the
government and signs off at end of the video without indicating that the VNR is anything but a legitimate news story. Even if they don't acknowledge it, the creators of the piece likely knew that there is a substantial difference
between what people heard ("In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting") and a properly identified VNR ("I'm Karen Ryan reporting from the U.S. Department of health and Human Services in Washington, D.C."). There's even a Spanish-language version aimed at Latino voters featuring correspondent "Alberto Garcia."

The ethical breach gets even stickier when you find out that the government
also prepared scripts for news anchors to use as they introduced the video,
featuring phrases like "Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details"
that seem designed to further its resemblance to real news. (While the video
itself has aired in a number of states, including Louisiana, it's unclear if
any newscasts elected to use this prepared script.)

The General Accounting Office (GAO), the nonpartisan body that functions as
Congress's investigative arm, has decided to investigate the matter because
of a concern that the VNRs might violate a prohibition on using funds for
"covert propaganda" and other government materials that are misleading about their origin. This prohibition came about after the U.S. State Department under the Reagan administration was discovered to be hiring consultants to author op-ed pieces and articles in support of their Central American policy back in 1987.

This incident is the latest in a long line of deceptions that the Bushites
seem almost addicted to. They've ranged from minor and relatively innocuous episodes like George W. presenting troops with a fake turkey for a staged Thanksgiving photo op to far more serious allegations about justifications for the invasion of Iraq. This reliance on fakery extends beyond turkeys and journalists to the use of fake firefightersAs for VNRs, they've been around since at least the 1980s and are used
widely by both government and business as sort of video press releases. The American Dental Association uses them, and even has their own, presumably fake "reporters" presenting them.Groups like Medialink
(www.medialink.com/vnr.htm) prepare television versions of corporate press
releases and produce them in broadcast news stylenewscasts, and a convenient resource for producers struggling to fill air
time, especially at small stations without the resources to produce enough
of their own quality news. Sometimes clearly identified as a message from
whatever interest group is releasing it and sometimes not, VNRs tread an
ethical grey area. Airing a VNR without proper identification is like
printing a press release as your own story.

VNRs have also been used in Europe but, at least in Britain, there has been
some action taken to restrict their use following an emotional Greenpeace
video about their efforts to prevent the dumping of Shell's Brent Spar oil
platform, which led to what editors at BBC and ITN later admitted was biased
coverage of the issue. Guidelines were drawn up to label VNRs as
suchIn the U.S., while a coalition of prominent journalism organizations
including the Society of Professional Journalists have released a joint
letter of protest against VNRs, the Radio-Television News Directors
Association chose to simply clarify their guidelines on the use of VNRs in
newscasts. Hardly a muscular response to such an entrenched problem, and
certainly open to criticism. In their battle for the hearts and minds of
citizens in a democracy, governments and corporations can't be entirely
trusted to show all sides of a debate with any objectivity. The onus rests
with the journalistsair their next VNR.

Is this any way to describe corporate commercials and "public diplomacy"
in the name of globalism?
---------------
http://users.actweb.net/~eye/propaganda/articles/corporate_news.htm

"Perhaps the only bigger distributor of video 'news' releases than Medialink is the Pentagon. ..."

blatant propaganda home > propaganda index > here

blatant propaganda article:

CORPORATE SPONSORED NEWS?

Increasingly, what TV news stations pass off as news are actually video news
releases: expensive and professional videos prepared by advertising firms
and paid for by large corporations.

Groups like Medialink beam these video news releases, or VNRs, via satellite
to television news editors. These editors, lured by the polished product
available at no cost, run these press releases as news, much like the print
media do with the VNRs written counterparts.

The result?

Corporate-sponsored ad agencies are subtly changing and controlling the news we see on the tube.

Their use is widespread. For example, 81.2 million people saw a "news"
report on dolphin-safe tuna fishing methods on t.v. last year. Reporters did
not dig up this story. It was fed to them by Starkist Seafood Co., who hired
Chicago-based Edelman Public Relations Worldwide to produce it. Ad
executives sailed on fishing boats to promote Starkist's product. News
directors, undoubtedly impressed by the artfully shot and edited scenes of
playful dolphins, fierce seas, and rugged yet environmentally sensitive
boathands, ate it up. The question: Is dolphin-safe tuna newsworthy without
easily available PR material about it? If so, why not assign reporters to
the story instead of relying on the advertising people? If not, why run it
on the news at all? The answer, of course, is money. Assigning reporters and camera crews to an all-day or even all-week fishing expedition is an expense that most news stations cannot afford, or at least wish to avoid. But
Starkist can afford it. In fact, faced with a nationwide boycott of their
tuna, StarKist can't afford not to.

Edelman also produced a VNR for the Nutrasweet Company about fat substitutes which was run as "news" and seen by 54.1 million people. No doubt this VNR featured scientists talking about health hazards, maybe even an animated segment showing fat cells clogging up arteries and killing folks. Then an interview with a Nutrasweet technician reporting objectively on alternatives to fatty foods.

Other examples: 21.8 million people watched Soviets line up at the new
Moscow McDonald's to enjoy a hamburger. McDonald's Corporation paid
Patterson-Parkington First International of Toronto to create the news. Here
we have Americans watching a Canadian-made film of Russians eating Central American Beef. First International, indeed.

And 18.6 million people learned about the "International Rotten Sneaker
Contest" from their trusty news anchors. Odor-Eaters paid Combe Inc. of
White Plains, New York to create that "news".

All of these examples are amusing in a disgusting sort of way.

But some video news releases are deadly.

For instance, 61.4 million people saw a VNR on Iraq's (1990) invasion of
Kuwait. 35.3 milllion saw a later YNR depicting human rights abuses
perpetrated by the Iraqis against the Kuwaitis. Reporters were not involved
in these two particular news accounts. Hill and Knowlton of Washington, DC
crated this news, commissioned by a group called Citizens for a Free Kuwait.
This group, rumored to be working with five million petrodollars belonging
to the Emir (of Kuwait) himself, also hired a PR firm to mass produce "Free
Kuwait" T-Shirts, flags, bumper stickers, and assorted Desert Shield/Storm
souvenirs. The group's task was to put a positive spin on the Emir's
repressive regime so that Americans could feel good about killing and dying
to restore Kuwait's legitimate dictator.

Perhaps the only bigger distributor of video "news" releases than Medialink
is the Pentagon. What name other than VNR could you call the footage of
smart bombs dropping through Iraqi chimneys? The networks salivated over
that video clip, and hundreds of others like it, supplied by the military,
designed to put a positive spin on what the United Nations now calls "near
apocalyptic" allied bombing which has taken Iraq back to a pre-industrial
age.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

The above article was taken from NEXUS Magazine. It was originally taken by
Nexus from an article entitled 'Advertising Invades the Newsroom' by Carl
Hammarskjold which appeared in a November 1991 issue of the "Anderson Valley
Advertiser", (Booneville, CA, USA).

According to Medialink study from 2001, 90% of TV newsrooms now rely on VNRs
and B-roll provided by outside sources as a regular part of their newscasts.
Much of this is simply self-serving corporate or GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA.
------------------
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Video_news_releases
--------------
http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_102403_news.html
this week archive station guide Meet OTM The Nightly News Sell

October 24, 2003

BOB GARFIELD: Well, that's morning chat. At least viewers can rest assured
that stories they see on the local news are journalistically pure. Or can
they? The convergence of public relations ingenuity and broadcast stations'
budgetary exigencies has yielded another dubious hybrid: the Video News
Release -- a P.R. bonanza, and the news business's dirty little secret.
Here's an example. [TAPE PLAYS]
...
LARRY MOSCOWITZ: We determined prima facie and scientifically and
electronically that every television station in America with a newscast has
used and probably uses regularly this material from corporations and
organizations that we provide as VNRs or B-Roll or other terminology we may use.

BOB GARFIELD: Not all VNRs run whole. Most often they are mined for a clip
of background footage here, an interview fragment there. But producers
estimate that as many as one in three appear uncut, unedited and un-examined for balance or even basic accuracy. And why? Because they are there, tempting budget-battered news directors. And because they are free.

DEBORAH POTTER: VNRs are enabling devices.

BOB GARFIELD: Former CBS correspondent Deborah Potter is director of the
News Lab, the Washington, D.C. nonprofit dedicated to quality local
television.

DEBORAH POTTER: They allow newsrooms to do less of their own work without fear of running out of material before the end of the hour. It's a concern, and it ought to be a concern, frankly, for viewers if much of the material that they're starting to get on the news isn't news.

BOB GARFIELD: As long as there has been a press, there has been a symbiotic relationship between journalism and P.R. -- and not necessarily an insidious one. Publicists and politicians looking to promote their agendas can serve those interests, and the media's as well, by calling attention to news or even fluff of interest to the public. It then becomes the media's job to establish the broader context and to separate the newsworthy wheat from the gratuitously promotional chaff -- and to be clear about the source of
PR-furnished material. For instance, the Tropicana excerpt you heard at the
top of this piece we found in a documentary based on John Stauber's book.
Deborah Potter.

DEBORAH POTTER: I feel very strongly that if stations are going to use VNR
material they need to tell where it came from. It makes a difference if the
whaling video you're using came from Greenpeace or from the Coalition to
Support Whaling.

BOB GARFIELD: Barbara Cochrane, president of the Radio and Television News Directors Association says she believes most stations and networks do
routinely identify the source of outside video, as per the ethical
guidelines of her organization. But those within the VNR industry roll their
eyes at that assertion. Doug Simon of VNR producer D.S. Simon Productions
says disclosure is the exception -not the rule.

DOUG SIMON: From what we see, there's a very small percentage - perhaps less than 5% - that actually is identified what the source of the video is.
BOB GARFIELD: That makes him uneasy, but VNR producers can't do such
disclosure themselves. Each station uses a different on-screen typeface to
identify video, so the onus is on those airing the material, and dependent
as they are on the illusion of a far-flung newsgathering operation, with
tentacles throughout the community and beyond, there's little motivation to
do so.

LARRY MOSCOWITZ: Can I say that local television stations have been lax?
Yeah.

BOB GARFIELD: MediaLink's Moscowitz acknowledges that stations are less than scrupulous about identifying the source of the footage he supplies. He does not believe, however, that the sin is particularly grave -- at least
compared to other forms of journalism.

LARRY MOSCOWITZ: There is more unexpurgated, unedited and unredacted press information that shows up in the average daily newspaper in America, and certainly in the average weekly newspaper, probably by a 5 to 1 factor over the P.R. material that shows up in television. So you might be going after the wrong goat here.

BOB GARFIELD: The two wrongs make a right argument isn't the only one in
favor of the video news release. Candace White, marketing professor at the
University of Tennessee at Knoxville and co-author of a 2001 study about
VNRs, says the same self-interest that encourages news directors to use VNRs dictates that the material is used responsibly.

CANDACE WHITE: See, I trust news producers to be able to weed out true news value; I give them credit for being able to recognize blatant sales pitches. Our study found that the corporate videos were used the least, and the ones about health and safety were used the most.

BOB GARFIELD: But it's not necessarily the blatant sales pitches that are so
dangerous. It is the subtle sales pitches, and the implication of independent journalistic approval conferred on a company or organization and its point of view, which is why her study's co-author, journalism professor Mark Harmon, sees VNRs as (quote) "insidious devices by corporate America to control the American agenda." Nor is the problem restricted to the local
news. Not only do major networks use VNR footage. At least one, CBS, has a
division which produces and distributes them. This gets back to the disdain
and fear voiced by author and consumer advocate John Stauber.

JOHN STAUBER: All public relations is not sinister or evil or bad. But I
think the important thing to understand is that indeed all public relations
is propaganda.

BOB GARFIELD: So whether it's images of a NASA space walk or a
self-congratulatory sound bite from your Congressman or swell health news
about delicious calcium-fortified Tropicana orange juice, the message for TV
news consumption is as ever: Let the viewer beware. While TV runs into
problems when it fails to separate advertising from programming, it
certainly can't do without advertising all together, and sponsors aren't
picking up the programming tab out of the goodness of their hearts. They
need an audience to watch the commercials. And the steady shrinking of
network audiences is creating a gathering terror. The latest shocker from
the A.C. Nielsen Company, a report that since last season alone, 750,000
men, aged 18 to 34 --advertisers' most coveted demographic -- have simply stopped watching TV. Joining me now to discuss this bombshell is David Poltrack, executive vice president of research and planning at CBS. Dave, welcome to On the Media.

DAVID POLTRACK: Well I wish I had the answer to that question. This is one
of these anomalies that turns up in the audience measurement system
occasionally, and would just be sort of a idle curiosity if it didn't mean
so much economically.

BOB GARFIELD: Fine. It may be an anomaly, or it may just be some sort of
blip that will be self-correcting. But what if it isn't? Is it possible that
this is, as someone put it, the canary in the mineshaft?

DAVID POLTRACK: Advertisers are not going to abandon network television to any significant degree unless they can find something better, and the
fragmentation in the television marketplace has impacted the television
network audiences significantly, but it hasn't really created any new
alternative. The fact that the networks have maintained their pricing is
really a function of the fact that the top 20 shows have had significantly
less erosion than the balance of the shows. So the premium product of
network television has relatively held up. And in this particular case, of
course, it's not just the network audiences going down. It's the overall
audience that's going down. So there will be no relative winner in this, if
it continues, which means that there's not an alternative out there that's
getting stronger as a result of this, so it'll probably have very little
effect in terms of the supply and demand mechanics of the marketplace.
BOB GARFIELD: I want to ask you for a moment to at least consider taking off the rose-colored glasses. Recently you were quoted responding to a
projection that the use of personal video recording devices like TiVo was
going to quintuple by the year 2007, which will in effect dramatically
reduce the number of people actually watching commercials broadcast on over the air television.

You were quoted as kind of shrugging, saying, well you know, we lose a certain percentage of our audience every year to cable, and yet the model continues to be going strong. Is it possible that between the growth of the internet, between the introduction of such devices as TiVo and other PVR technology, and the overall fragmentation of the audience that networks are close to losing the critical mass of gigantic audiences that enable them to sustain this model, and that there's a death watch on for the goose that lays the golden egg? Is that one of the possibilities?

DAVID POLTRACK: Well these are all changes that we have to adapt to. We
recognize that we can't count on just our distribution system to keep us on
top, and we have to look at cross-platform types of arrangements,
re-purposing, all of the different things that are going to be very much a
function of an environment where the viewer has more control. We have a
challenge ahead of us. There's no question about it. I mean that's why
we're, you know, we're pushing so hard for the FCC relaxation on the
ownership limits, because the economics of local television station
ownership support the finances and the programming investments of the
television networks. The more stations we own, the more stable the
advertiser model is for us, and there are a lot of pressures on that model.
There's no question about it. You know, we're not being complacent or blase
about the fact that it's just going to continue to go on.
BOB GARFIELD: Well, David, thank you very much.
DAVID POLTRACK: Okay.
BOB GARFIELD: David Poltrack is executive vice president of research and
planning at CBS. He joined us from his office at Black Rock. [MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, a documentation of terror using the terrorists' own
video. This is On the Media, from NPR. [FUNDING CREDITS]
copyright 2003 WNYC Radio
---------

MediaLink (http://www.medialink.com//_aboutuscorp.htm) is a GLOBAL
LEADER in corporate communications services, connecting corporate clients
with news industry producers. MediaLink boasts proprietary databases used
in audience research, while a PARTNERSHIP with the Associated Press puts the
PROPAGANDA of MediaLink clients on the desks of most United States'
television news editors. MediaLink claims credit for having pioneered video
news releases

... Personal thoughts about the release of prisoners of war and the training
received to prepare them for the eventuality were shared by one male and
three female pilots in interviews transmitted via satellite from Doha. Two
of the women refuel planes in flight and the third is a weapons systems
officer, one of only a few U.S. Air Force females assigned to this role in
her squadron.

The two groups of satellite interviews were the second and third projects in
as many weeks delivered by Medialink for Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC) on behalf of the U.S. Air Force. Earlier, SAIC tapped
Medialink to manage a similar live broadcast originating from a studio in
Washington, D.C., which garnered 22 television bookings in major markets.

"We are continuing to see demand from local TV stations for live satellite
interviews and taped video segments concerning war-related topics, as well
as relevant consumer news," said Lidj Lewis, Vice President of Media
Relations, Medialink. "Our strong relationships with broadcasters in the
United States and around the world have enabled us to provide our clients
with the timely strategic counsel that is critical in this swiftly-changing
news environment."...

Before reviewing my pilot studies, it is important to understand why VNRs
can be so misleading. The VNR that triggered the greatest shock was created by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton, on October 10, 1992. This was one month after U.S. troops had been sent to Kuwait to stop Iraqi
aggressions, and before Congress had actually approved the Gulf War.
Nayirah, a fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl, gave public testimony in front of
the congressional human rights caucus. With tears in her eyes, and at times
barely able to continue, she told of armed Iraqi soldiers storming hospitals
in Kuwait, snatching premature babies out of their incubators, and leaving
them on the floor to die...Nayirah's story was recorded by a camera crew
hired by Hill and Knowlton, and the film was used to produce a video news
release. Portions of the film were aired that night on NBC's Nightly News.
The VNR was also sent to MEDIALINK, eventually reaching a total audience of
about 35 million...President Bush evoked Nayirah's story six times in one
month while explaining the need to go to war...No fewer than seven senators referred to the babies as justification for their support of the January 12, 1991 resolution authorizing war....What members of Congress did not know was that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. She had been coached by Hill and Knowlton before giving testimony....The PR company was working for a group...being financed almost entirely by the Kuwaiti royal family.[14]

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Let's go back a few days -- to Monday, to be precise. The country observed Memorial Day, of course, and President Bush was at Arlington National Cemetery playing the role of the proud yet mournful leader of a nation at war.

"I am humbled by those who have made the ultimate sacrifice that allow a free civilization to endure and flourish," Mr. Bush said in remarks dedicated to all those who have died in battle, but with a particular emphasis on the American servicemen and servicewomen who have died in Iraq in the past year.

Some talk for a commander in chief now described by a once-trusted aide as a man who saw sending others off to war as his one and only shot at attaining greatness.

"War should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary," former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in his book "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception."

For Mr. Bush, the tactics of deception meant misleading the country about the very reasons for what's become a disastrous war with no end in sight, Mr. McClellan writes. Selling the war meant ignoring intelligence to the contrary and instead peddling the fiction that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

"Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would almost certainly not support a war launched primarily for the ambitious purpose of transforming the Middle East," Mr. McClellan writes. "President Bush managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."

Mr. McClellan, of course, was right there in the White House when the march to war was in such full and disingenuous force. His burst of conscience, five years and more than 4,000 deaths later, is now subject to the very sort of relentless scrutiny Mr. Bush and his administration largely avoided in 2002 and 2003. And it's far too late for a version of truth we have no reason to dispute to have any impact on an administration that will be out of power, at last, in less than eight months.

Some have made the point that the damage has been done -- to the country, to the war's casualties and to Mr. McClellan's own credibility. In the blogosphere, Wonkette tells the tale in six words -- "Bush Propagandist Complains of Bush Propaganda."

Mr. McClellan himself is harsh in his introspection. "I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be," he writes, making the equally valid point that many of us in the press were enablers in the rush to go to war.

For that, naturally, he gets his from the White House.

"It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew," comes the word from White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

But neither is this the war the country thought it knew, is it?

Shame on Mr. Bush, who's more interested in Memorial Day platitudes than even attempting to rebut a damning if much-belated account of military misadventure.

THE ISSUE: A former White House spokesman bares his soul about Iraq.

THE STAKES: How many lives were lost by the rush to war? How many lives were lost due to the delay in coming clean?

New York, May 29: Bedbugs are biting at the midtown home of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, according to a lawsuit set to be filed Thursday in state court.

Jane Clark, a Fox News veteran, intends to sue the owner of 1211 Sixth Avenue, the midtown tower that houses the New York Post and the Fox News Channel, over alleged bedbug bites that have left her with a post-traumatic stress disorder.

Three alleged encounters last year with the creepy critters forced her out of work, according to a press release from her lawyer, Alan Schnurman.

Now Clark is filing suit in Manhattan Supreme Court against Beacon Capital Partners, the building's Boston-based owner, as well as the building's maintenance company.

A spokeswoman for Beacon Capital declined to comment until the company receives the lawsuit. A News Corp. spokesman would not comment, pointing out that the company is not the target of Clark's complaint.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The highly-visible (on the net) John McAdams is convinced that Oswald shot Kennedy - there is no evidence on earth or the wide universe that can dissuade him ... it must be Oswald ... only Oswald ... Oswald alone ... Oswald, Oswald, Oswald ...

You probably didn't hear about the House voting to ban Pentagon propaganda -- since the networks have failed to cover the story.

By Josh Silver, Huffington Post.May 26, 2008.

You probably didn't hear about the House voting to ban Pentagon propaganda last Thursday -- since the television networks have once again conveniently failed to cover the story.

But in a surprise move, a 2009 defense policy bill passed with an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.), that outlaws the Defense Department from engaging in "a concerted effort to propagandize" the American people. The measure would also force an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) into efforts to plant positive news stories about the war in U.S. media....

On May 13, watchdog Media Matters documented that analysts in the Pentagon's program appeared or were quoted in major outlets more than 4,500 times.

If the Senate also passes the propaganda ban, it will send a strong message to the Pentagon and other government agencies that the Congress will not allow the continued manipulation of public opinion.

But let's not forget that this is just the most recent major government propaganda revelation in recent years. In March 2005, the New York Times revealed that several federal agencies were producing fake "video news releases" that local television stations aired as if they were bona fide news reports.

Two months before that, several "payola pundits" were discovered to be receiving lucrative government PR contracts to opine in favor of Bush administration policies -- without disclosing their financial arrangement. Armstrong Williams was the poster-child, with his $240,000 contract from the Department of Education to promote the president's "No Child Left Behind Act."

It is crucial to understand that with or without the Pentagon's program, there will always be well-credentialed analysts pushing to get on the air who are eager to toe the administration's line for fame, ideology or money. And the right is historically much better at training them and getting them in front of cameras.

But at the end of the day, it is the television newsroom producers and "bookers" - and the executives who hire them -- who decide who gets on TV and who doesn't. And the vast majority of them consistently turn to government officials, major politicians and party insiders. They seldom turn to dissenting voices, critical public interest advocates and fierce critics of government policy.

On May 5, MSNBC's Chris Matthews revealed that "all my bosses [were] … basically pro-war during the war. … and I was up against that." Again, a major revelation ignored by most of the press that explains the culture that subsumed every major network newsroom.

On Friday, the GAO said it had already begun looking into the program and would provide a legal opinion. On the same day, the inspector general's office at the Defense Department also announced that it would investigate the Pentagon program.

The House spending bill will be taken up by the Senate after next week's recess, and legislators will have to insert a similar amendment. The White House has threatened to veto the entire bill, citing concerns with several provisions.

Congress should hold high-profile hearings to get to the bottom of the Pentagon program and force the issue into the news. If the networks won't cover it, at least C-SPAN will.

Two things are certain. First, consolidated, corporate media is failing to provide critical journalism, and is aiding and abetting government propaganda. Second, this is not the last time this media blight will rear its ugly head, and as long as it does, the American public will continue to be led by the nose to support disastrous wars, policies and politicians.

As the occupation of Iraq continues, the death toll rises and rises “over there.” Now, cynical Americans and our shameful press are ignoring the ugly news of how we have been deceived by the mouthpieces of the country’s most powerful institutions.

Recently, The New York Times sued the Pentagon and then used 8000 pages of email transcripts and records to expose illegal covert propaganda paid for by U.S. tax dollars.

On April 20, The Times reported on its front page that top officials working for Donald Rumsfeld recruited military analysts to espouse optimism and spin about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, even when sometimes they suspected the information was false. Many pundits delivered talking points on American television and in newspapers while working for companies competing for military contracts.

At the same time that many of these shills were looking to cash in on the war privately, and following the public relations advice of the Pentagon while paid with American tax dollars, they were being treated as reliable sources by the television networks and even National Public Radio.

NPR’s Ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, admitted on her blog that Robert Scales, who founded the defense consulting firm Colgen in 2003, “has been on NPR 67 times, most often on All Things Considered ... Only once in December 2006 was Scales’ relationship to Colgen mentioned. In the future NPR should always be transparent and identify him as a defense consultant with Colgen.”

NPR’s new guidelines for “vetting guests” aside, the public radio network plans to retain Scales, despite his involvement in the Pentagon’s program. The news chiefs and on-air hosts at CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, and CBS have not apologized for this flagrant violation of any meaningful democratic principles.

Speaking on my radio program, Digital Crossroads, last Friday on KAOS, author and journalism professor Robert Jensen said, “We shouldn’t expect an institution to undermine its own credibility, and that’s what we would be asking the corporate media to do, to report on how they have become tools of propaganda for the government.”

While it may come as no surprise that the managers of America’s corporate newsrooms are at best ethically challenged, the Pentagon program clearly violates legal restrictions Congress has been placing in its appropriation bills annually since 1951.

In a report April 28, Center for Media and Democracy research director Diane Farsetta extrapolated, “According to those restrictions, ‘No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress.’”

The Government Accountability Office has three definitions of “publicity or propaganda”: either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) “covert propaganda.” The Pentagon “message multiplier” strategies unveiled by David Barstow in the New York Times violate GAO legality standards because they are covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties.

U.S. Senators Russ Feingold and John Kerry have written letters requesting legal opinion from the GAO. It is unlikely any true justice will come of this. After the Reagan administration was caught using third-party surrogates to promote the Contra war in Nicaragua in the 1980s, promises were made to comply in the future and no one was punished. As of now, there are no confessions and no promises.

In an interview with Think Progress, Pennsylvania Representative John Murtha said, “I’ve gotten to the point where I now distrust the military because they have been dishonored by these kind of untruths… With Rumsfeld’s tenure, they distorted everything.”

The covert media analyst program was launched in 2002 to sell the invasion of Iraq. According to Barstow’s article, it was then used to convince Americans of progress in Afghanistan, to defend warrantless wiretapping and to whitewash Guantanamo Bay.

John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy calls it “a psy-ops campaign.” At least 75 former military officers were invited to become “message multipliers” for the Secretary of Defense and the Pentagon. One analyst who dared to criticize the Pentagon in a TV appearance was kicked off the propaganda bus shortly after.

Many Americans heard so-called experts during the build up to the invasion. Particularly egregious was retired general Barry McCaffrey on MSNBC early in the war.

“Thank God for the Abrams tank,” he intoned. “And the Bradley fighting vehicle.” Both pieces of hardware relied on parts sold by Integrated Defense Technologies, on whose board McCaffrey was sitting at the time, according to the Nation magazine.

Amy Goodman and other independent journalists have repeatedly called attention to the lack of antiwar voices on the networks. Phil Donahue and Dan Rather claim they lost their jobs because of their lack of perceived patriotism. Instead, the networks preferred war coverage reliant on Pentagon talking points, voiced over the air by surrogates.

The Society of Professional Journalists issued a statement of collective outrage on May 9, calling for networks to conduct ethical autopsies on their coverage and source selection.

Meanwhile, Americans need to think critically. We are faced with government spin and one-sided corporate news. We can expect no apology from either institution. The credibility gap between official statements and reality grows right along with the deficit, while our taxes fund lies and deception intended to fool us into supporting brutal U.S. foreign policy. We should not accept the marginalization of war criticism, and if we continue to ignore the real stories, the Iraq War and its death toll will not go away.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

NEW YORK Even as Hillary Clinton worked to defuse her Friday comment about the 2008 campaign and the Robert Kennedy assassination, a Fox New contributor went much further, joking about someone actually targeting Barack Obama.

Appearing on Fox News today, Liz Trotta, a former editor with the Washington Times and reporter the Chicago Tribune and Newsday, was asked by the host, Eric Shawn, about the Clinton controversy and the 2008 race. This led Trotta to refer to the Clinton misstep, in which she mentioned the RFK killing to show (the candidate later claimed) that previous campaigns, like the current one, went into June.

Trotta, according to video, replied, "And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, uh Obama. Well, both, if we could." She laughed.

The host, Shawn, clearly understanding how far she had gone, quickly commented: "Talk about how you really feel."

Then he continued: "But do you really think that--she didn't mean that she thinks that he going to get assassinated, and she apologized--

Trotta: "Well, that's beside the point, whether she meant it or not."

Shawn: "And she's just using it in a historical context?"

Trotta: "She's tone deaf, because it's a radioactive word. And the whole question of the first black man becoming a candidate for presidency of the United States has all kinds of overtones and all kinds of caveats that really have to be considered in this thing. And his security has been a real issue. He's had bodyguards earlier than anybody else. Surely this woman had to know that that was a third rail to say 'assassination.' And it's hard to argue for her on this, because it isn't the first time she's made this step."

Saturday, May 24, 2008

" ... It goes without saying that Mr. Prager is an adamant supporter of President George W. Bush, [and] often describes him as 'great.' ... Mr. Prager went even further on his radio talk show declaring that our current President Bush 'was chosen through the direct intervention of God' ... "http://isurvived.org/4Debates/Prager_Dennis-USHMM/prager_dennis-USHMM.html

Prager is an ultra-con talk show host whose "opinions" are straight out of the CIA black propaganda chit-sheets. If there is a CIA operation afoot, especially one that involves mind control, he is right there, blowing smoke with the most maddeningly illogical arguments ever heard from the media. For years, Prager worked for ABC/Cap Cities, a key CIA Mockingbird outlet/mass mind control front. Yes, he is Jewish, but it his intelligence role that matters, not his religion. If he was Catholic - like most of those at Cap Cities - now owned by Disney (named for a famed Nazi/CIA-FBI collaborator), Prager would be no less a fascist prig who warps minds and facilitates CIA atrocities with his "conservative" moonshine.

Prager prides himself on his "logic" - and often touts his own books on the air, as if they are Socratic works of philosophy, makes a great show of his intellectual "prowess" - which closely resembles fascist sophistry: " ... Islamist groups calling themselves Muslim civil liberties groups and various Western organizations repeatedly declare that Islamophobia is racism. Of course, some may argue that whereas conservatism and liberalism are ideas, Islam is a religion, and while one can attack ideas, one must not attack religions. It is, however, quite insulting to religions to deny that they are ideas. ... " Sure-sure ...http://flaggman.wordpress.com/2007/08/01/dennis-prager-on-islamophobia/

Dennis Prager, RacistXymphora.comNovember 17, 2005

Dennis Prager has written an expressly racist anti-Muslim op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, and Juan Cole has deftly shredded it. I've have only one question for the Los Angeles Times, which is where do they get the nerve to print such racist drivel. If Prager had been writing in the 1950's, his equivalent article on civil rights would have been called 'Five questions non-Negros would like answered'. The answer to my question to the Times is that anti-Muslim racism is invisible to Americans. You can write whatever you want about Muslims, make whatever generalizations you want, and make whatever factual misstatements (i. e., lies) you want, and no one will notice what you are really up to. The United States has done a fairly good job at dealing with the intellectual basis of its traditional anti-Black racism (but not such a good job in the practicalities, as seen in the aftermath of Katrina), but has simply replaced underlying anti-Black racism with underlying anti-Muslim racism. The underlying assumptions explain why Prager can get away with such an outrageous op-ed.

Prager's op-ed fits into the pattern of Zionist propaganda which completely dominates the American media. The general idea is that Muslims are uniquely ill-suited to govern themselves, and therefore it is perfectly acceptable to deny them the national sovereignty in places like Iraq and Syria that everybody else has as a matter of course, and perfectly acceptable for Israel to deny the Palestinians the nationhood that every other people in the world is entitled to have. The idea is that 'non-Muslims' regrettably have to treat Muslims differently because of some weird and unique failing in Muslims themselves, which is presumably some sort of brain damage you catch from reading the Koran (as I can think of no other similarity that Muslims around the world have that would require them to all be treated like children). We've recently seen some spectacular examples of this Zionist propaganda in articles by Pipes, Boot and Steyn, all ridiculously trying to shoe-horn the French riots into their understanding that the West is in the middle of an attack by Islam. Prager is just another of the same bunch, pretending to innocently ask questions while really forming another part of the general Zionist propaganda war required for Israel and the United States to do the things they are doing to Muslims in the Middle East. Prager is an out-and-out racist, and its high time Americans started to notice it and complain about it.

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/11/dennis-prager-racist.html

"Mr. Prager is an activist, advocate, and a partisan of the conservative Republican party. He openly attacks the so-called leftist liberals that include universities, trial lawyers, labor unions, the ACLU, Civil Rights groups, large newspapers and television networks, and so on. He is also against all those that do not see the unique positive historical effect that the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition has had upon America and the world, of institutions like the Presbyterian Church (USA), the National Council of Churches, or the Anti-Defamation League.

"Mr. Prager consider America as having some sort of 'moral superiority' in the world (through the so-called "American exceptionalism" doctrine) which, according to him and others, entitles the United States not be constrained by international laws or by the United Nations in pursuit of its goals. ... Based on this rationale of America's 'moral superiority,' Mr. Prager is an enthusiastic supporter of the United States' initiative in the War in Iraq, which he characterizes as another example of the US nobility. ... "

Friday, May 23, 2008

Re: Alex Beam (this is his professional obituary, we hope), the author of this Boston Globe article condemning "conspiracy theories" from Dallas to 9/11: " ... I don't think Dick Cheney, or the titans of capital, or the agents of the Apocalypse blew up the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 people to further some dark cause. I think the plot was hatched right where we think it was, in the faraway, hot sands of anti-American hatred. ... " Who exactly is Alex Beam?

His father was an ambassador to the Eastern Bloc:

"Beam grew up in Washington, D.C., as his father Jacob D. Beam was a diplomat. ... "See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Beam

Jacob Beam was a friend of Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh (they cavorted together in Hitler's Germany), and in a 1989 interview looked back on the fascist aviator as "a very impressive man." (For the suppressed dirt on Lindbergh, see the contemporaneous writing of George Seldes, eg.: "Lindbergh had written an article for the reactionary Reader's Digest stating Hitler's Aryan myth and other fascist doctrines."http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/George_Seldes/Facts_Fascism_TGSR.html)http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/beamjw.htm

From NameBase, a reference site on matters related to American intelligence:

New York Times: "An early assignment was the American Embassy in Berlin from 1934 to 1940." The Hitler years ... "After graduating from Princeton in 1929, Mr. Beam studied a year in England before joining the Foreign Service in 1931 in Switzerland. ... Through his 42 years as a diplomat, Mr. Beam repeatedly turned up in strategic locales at momentous points, when the stakes involved war, invasion, national independence or moves for disarmament and peace. .... In 1955 he was placed in charge of the State Department's office of Eastern European Affairs ... After retiring as the Ambassador to the Soviet Union, he served as chairman of Radio Free Europe. ... "http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE6DF103CF93BA2575BC0A965958260

Every one of his posts after the war would have brought him into close contact with the American intelligence apparat, particularly the CIA, if he wasn't one of them. His career included a stint at the Mutual Defense Assistance Program, which reinforced American hegemony around the world by using aid to control foreign governments and arming the non-communist world against the trumped-up charge of Soviet imperialism.

Mr. Beam was also an early member of the ultra-right Committee on the Present Danger.[See: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/gw/1589.html]

Alex Beam, his son, graduated from Yale University in 1975. He worked at Newsweek and BusinessWeek, according to his Wikipedia entry, "where his tenure included Boston and Moscow bureau chief, before joining the Boston Globe."

This is telling: "He was a John Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University in 1996-1997." The Knight Foundation is a CIA front.[Scroll down to Knight Foundation at: http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2008/02/duncan-blake-suicides-solved.html]

From Alex Beam's Wiki entry: "In addition to his journalistic work, Beam is the author of two novels set in Russia, Fellow Travelers (1987) and The Americans Are Coming! (1991), both published by St. Martin's Press. He has also published a work of non-fiction, exploring the history of McLean Hospital. The book, titled Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital, was published in January 2002. ... "

This is probably not a good thing:

" ... His son Christopher Beam is currently a political blogger for Slate."

So what does Alex Beam - whose father was a Nixon appointee (Kennedy was murdered to make way for Nixon) and who owes his Ivy League education to a CIA front - have to say about the Kennedy assassination?

"Oswald's Ghost" is an elegantly crafted, 90-minute obituary for the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

On the one hand, filmmaker Robert Stone (no relation to Oliver) reports that about 70 percent of Americans still disbelieve the official investigation into Kennedy's killing. Veteran conspiracy jockey Mark Lane crows that, unlike the major networks and editorial boards of The Washington Post and The New York Times, "I have been right all along" about the plot to kill Kennedy.

But a more impressive roster of experts, including the late Norman Mailer, Priscilla MacMillan and Todd Gitlin, has arrived at a different conclusion. Edward Jay Epstein, who has criticized the official Warren Report on the assassination, now thinks there was no anti-JFK conspiracy. "As we cover decade after decade, not a shred has come out that would indicate what this conspiracy was," Epstein says. "After 40 years, none of the theories pan out."

I don't know what Stone's agenda was in making "Oswald's Ghost." I understood it as a fairly subtle commentary on time. If there had been more truths to reveal about the Kennedy assassination, time would have yielded them. But it didn't. To borrow the language of "The X-Files," popcult's greatest conspiracy homage of recent time: Maybe the truth was out there all along.

hy is this relevant? Because we again are awash in conspiracy theories. Every major news event attracts an accompanying backwash of debunking, counter-factual argument and conspiracy-mongering. A recent Vanity Fair reported that "many people in London" believe that Prince Philip headed up a conspiracy to kill his erstwhile daughter-in-law, Princess Diana. Really? As if anyone cared.

The main event in contemporary conspiracy-mongering is, of course, 9/11. A few weeks into the fall of 2001, a friend called me from France and urged me to be the first American journalist to report the "truth" about the Sept. 11 attacks. He then sent me French newspaper stories "proving" that no airplane ever crashed into the Pentagon. While it is true that my French isn't what it used to be, I wasn't convinced.

The French have not monopolized this version of events. Not infrequently, I receive e-mails with subject lines like, "Yes, the Bush/Cheney regime deliberately let 9/11 happen."

"The Pentagon was struck by a 'hijacked' airliner 45 minutes after two other 'hijacked' airliners struck the WTC," this recent missive continued, "without the airliner being intercepted, approached, chased, or even seen by our air defenses? The Gov't still refuses to release clear video of whatever happened at the Pentagon to this day, six years later??? Why???"

This e-mail urges you and me to visit the Web site 911truth.org, and all I can say is, feel free to exercise your First Amendment rights. There is a "truth novel" (paging Mr. Orwell) about 9/11 coming out from a "New York Times Best-Selling Author" later this month. Look for it! On the Web site, you can check out the "peer-reviewed" Journal of 9/11 Studies. The site also allows you to download "resistance music," like Zan Overall's "I Want to Believe You, Mr. President," sung by Bill Horn and 911Truth Chorus. Sample lyric: "The more I learn about 9/11/Believing you gets harder to do."

You can watch clips of "Boston Tea Party" for 9/11 truth at the Web site boston911truth.org. I saw a video of retired Brigham Young University physicist Steven Jones explaining that he had found chemical evidence of Thermate, "a high-tech incendiary that melts steel like a hot knife through butter" in World Trade Center detritus. A press release from architect Richard Gage announces that "the official explanation of the total destruction of the World Trade Center skyscrapers has explicitly failed to address the massive evidence for explosive demolition."

Are there mysteries? Yes, there are mysteries. A friend of mine thinks that American Airlines's Flight 587, which crashed in Queens in the fall of 2001, was shoe-bombed. (Shoe bomber Richard Reid was arrested a month later on an American Airlines flight.) Even though I have since met an engineer who consulted on the investigation, which attributed the crash to wake turbulence and pilot error, I think my friend may be right.

But I don't think Dick Cheney, or the titans of capital, or the agents of the Apocalypse blew up the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 people to further some dark cause. I think the plot was hatched right where we think it was, in the faraway, hot sands of anti-American hatred.

I doubt the truth is out there. I think it is already here.

(DVD special features: A visit to Dealey Plaza in Dallas, "The Zapruder Film and Beyond" and an interview with producer Robert Stone. The DVD is available for purchase at www.shoppbs.org and proceeds support public television.)

Thursday, May 22, 2008

This organization - a CIA front - gave us Ralph Underwager, the widely "respected" child abuse "expert" who told the British press that child rape is "good for the victim." They also cover up CIA-cult ritual abuse and mind control operations. The FMSF for many years had a monopoly on press access - while real reporters on these topics (like myself) collected rejection slips.

There was, throughout the mid-80s and 90s and even currently, a complete press blackout on the reality of CIA mind control operations. As a result, the brainwashed public was led to revile the small victims of ritual abuse and mind control, and touted the perpetrators and their champions in the media - Ralph Underwager's FMSF.

There are thousands of CIA mind control/torture subjects in the U.S. who have been gagged by the media. The FMSF is the lying face of denial, and they, with all CIA perpetraors, rightfully belong behind bars for covering up horrendous crimes against humanity.

SPRINGFIELD, Va., May 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- English First warned fans of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Dr. James Dobson and other syndicated talk shows that a proposed FCC regulation would drive their favorite programs off the air.

On January 24, 2008, the FCC published a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" in the Federal Register which, if ultimately adopted, would impose a back-door version of the discredited "Fairness Doctrine" upon America's airwaves.

The FCC's proposed regulations claim that radio station "programming -- particularly network programming - often is not sufficiently culturally diverse" and that the FCC seeks "to ensure that broadcasters serve their communities, especially traditionally underserved audiences," such as non-English speakers, whether or not these people actually exist.

The FCC's proposed regulations also suggest a new requirement that all "licensees should convene and consult with permanent advisory boards."

These advisory boards "should include representatives of all segments of the community," a requirement which would empower self-appointed "community leaders," such as representatives of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) or the Center for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), to discourage commercial radio stations from airing discussions of controversial matters such as the costs of illegal immigration or the meaning of jihad.

English First has established a web site, http://www.keeprushontheair.com, containing the relevant FCC documents and a citizen's petition to the FCC. The deadline for FCC reply comments is June 11, 2008.

For some time it has been apparent that President Hugo Chavez – the democratically elected President of Venezuela – and his government have been on the US’s ‘regime change shopping list’. Such coup-inspiring attitudes were especially transparent in 2006, when the US’s National Security Strategy noted that: “In Venezuela, a demagogue awash in oil money [i.e. Chavez] is undermining democracy and seeking to destabilize the region.”[1]

So given the US government’s evident hostility towards Chavez’s emancipatory politics, it is not too surprising that their incessant propaganda is duly amplified by their corporate mouthpieces, the US media.[2] Similarly, British-based media watchdog, Medialens, have amply documented how supposedly progressive media outlets (e.g. the BBC) have contributed their part to the global disinformation campaign being waged against Chavez.[3]

It is all too obvious that in the eyes of the world’s ruling elites, Chavez is promoting the ‘wrong kind’ of democracy - that is, popular democracy instead of low-intensity democracy (or polyarchy).

To remedy the democratic problem that Venezuela poses to the interests of transnational capitalism, the US’s main democracy manipulating body, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has been busily financing opposition groups within Venezuelan civil society. Most famously such ‘democratic’ interventions have seen the NED and its cohorts facilitate the unsuccessful coup that temporarily removed Chavez from power in 2002. [4] More recently though, a central prong of the US government's War on Democracy [5] has been to criticise Chavez’s domestic media policies, which have been widely reported in the international corporate media as being hostile to “freedom of expression”. [6]

Considering the miserable state of affairs of the US’s ‘mainstream’ media, [7] it is strange that earlier this year this same media vilified the Venezuelan government for failing to renew the licence of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV). The irony of this situation is especially delightful because the CIA-linked [8] RCTV is “one of the oldest and largest opposition-controlled TV stations”, was an active participant in the US/NED-backed coup of 2002, and has been busy leading mediated attempts to oust Chavez from office ever since. [9]

While it has been well reported in the progressive media that the NED-linked media watchdog Reporters Without Borders [10] has been at the forefront of recent efforts to de-legitimize Venezuela’s media policies, [11] this same progressive media has for the most part overlooked the role of similarly ‘democratic’ human rights groups in facilitating such attacks. Noteworthy exceptions to this trend include two recent articles written by Greg Grandin [12] and Gregory Wilpert respectively: the latter of whom notes that is “very disappointing to see international human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch, the Washington Office on Latin America, the Carter Center, and the Committee to Protect Journalists condemn the [Venezuelan] government’s decision” to revoke RCTV’s license. [13] (For further details on the close links that exist between the NED and these human rights groups see Hijacking Human Rights). [14]

The focus of this article, however, will not be on such ‘human rights’ groups or on dubious activities of Reporters Without Borders, but in contrast to previous articles this article will draw attention to the ‘democratic’ activities of a little mentioned South American media watchdog which goes by the name of the Instituto De Prensa Y Sociedad. [15]

The Instituto De Prensa Y Sociedad (IPYS) – otherwise known as the Press and Society Institute – was founded in 1993 by Laura Puertas Meyer, and the Institute obtained their first NED grant in 1998 to help them “develop a national network to protect journalists” in Peru. Meyer’s involvement in founding IPYS is particularly noteworthy because he is presently the executive director of the Peruvian chapter of Transparency International, which perhaps not coincidentally is a key global ‘democracy promoting’ organization. IPYS’s linked to Transparency International do not end there, as in 2002 Transparency International’s Americas programme coordinator, Marta Erquicia, joined forces with IPYS to launch an annual award for investigative journalism. [16] Furthermore, it is significant to observe that George Soros’s [17] Open Society Institute sponsors the award, and two of the five members of the prizes jury have ‘democratic’ ties: these two judges are Gustavo Gorriti (who is a member of IYPS, has received the ‘democratically’ connected Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award in 1998, [18] is listed as an individual endorser of the UN Democracy Caucus, and is a member of the Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium for Investigative Journalism), [19] and Tina Rosenberg (who serves on The New York Times editorial board, and on the advisory board of the National Security Archive). [20] Considering all these ‘democratic’ ties it is ironic that the two winners of this Soros-sponsored award in 2006, Tamoa Calzadilla and Laura Weffer, won because of their reporting on the “irregularities in the investigation of the [Danilo] Anderson murder case” – Anderson being the Venezuelan state prosecutor “in charge of identifying those responsible of [the] failed [2002] coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.” [21]

The current executive director of IPYS Peru is Ricardo Uceda, a reporter who formerly “directed the newsweekly Si, and ran the El Comercio’s investigative unit”. It is significant to note that in 1993 – while working for Si – Uceda was awarded the Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award. [22] Again perhaps not coincidentally, two of the four other winners of the International Press Freedom Award in 1993 have ‘democratic’ ties, these being, Doan Viet Hoat (who was the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial’s 1995 Human Rights Award, and is a director of the World Press Freedom Committee – a group that describes its original purpose as “oppos[ing] proposals for a restrictive new world information and communication order”) [23] and Veran Matic (who in 1993 was working for Radio B92 in Yugoslavia – a station that received a grant from the NED in 1991, and continued to receive support throughout the 1990s from ‘democracy promoting’ organizations intent on ousting Slobodan Milosevic). [24]

IPYS Peru can boast other ‘democratic’ links as they have worked alongside the NED-funded Association for Civil Rights, an Argentinean NGO that “was founded in 1995 in Argentina with the purpose of contributing to the establishment of a legal and institutional culture that would guarantee fundamental rights to the inhabitants of our country, based on respect for the Constitution.” [25] The Association for Civil Rights also receives funding from other key ‘democratic’ groups like the British Council, the Ford Foundation, and the Open Society Institute: [26] likewise it is interesting to observe that IPYS Peru is a partner organization of the Open Society Institute’s Open Society Justice Initiative. [27]

IPYS Peru obtained renewed NED support to continue their work protected press freedom in Peru in both 2000 and 2001. Of more relevance to this article though, was the creation, in 2002, of a Venezuelan branch of IPYS. Like their Peruvian chapter, IPYS Venezuela has obtained ongoing support from the NED, and in their founding year they received their first grant to organize a forum “for media owners, editors, journalists, and leaders of international media-advocacy groups to reflect on the state of freedom of expression and journalism in Venezuela.” The following year they obtained another NED grant, which was used to (1)“construct a network of alerts in Venezuela to report attacks and threats against journalists”, (2) “support correspondents in the provinces by monitoring press conditions and investigating cases of attacks or threats, and… offer a series of professional training sessions for journalists”, and (3) to “participate in regional press-advocacy meetings and work with international and regional organizations dedicated to freedom of expression.” The NED has continued to provide annual grants to IPYS Venezuela, and in 2006 they gave them their largest grant to date. [28]

However, perhaps most significantly, today – that is, on September 18, 2007 – IPYS Venezuela received the NED’s coveted Democracy Award. [29] As their website notes, the NED’s Democracy Award is given annually “to recognize the courageous and creative work of individuals and organizations that has advanced the cause of human rights and democracy around the world.” This year however, instead of judging the work of an assortment of democracy activists, the Democracy Award aimed to spotlight the work of press freedom activists from around the world. Four awards were given this year, so in addition to IPYS obtaining the award, three other individuals were awarded the NED’s Democracy Award: these three journalists were Anna Politkovskaya (the Russian journalist who was murdered in October 2006, and was formerly the 2005 recipient of the ‘democratic’ Civil Courage Prize), [30] Hisham Kassem (who is “[o]ne of Egypt’s most prominent publishers and democracy activists”, and has served as chairman of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights – a group that received six NED grants between 1994 and 2003), and Kavi Chongkittavorn (who is the assistant group editor of Nation Media Group, a member of the steering committee of the NED-created World Movement for Democracy, [31] and chair of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance – a group that since 1999 has received annual NED support for its work in Malaysia).

Here it is significant to note that the three aforementioned media freedom groups – IPYS, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance – are all members of a media network known as the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX). Their affiliation to IFEX is especially noteworthy because 16 of IFEX’s 72 members have received funding from either, the NED, the Westminster Foundation or Rights and Democracy (the NED’s counterpart organisations in the UK and Canada respectively). [32] Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders, to name just two, are perhaps the most notorious media organisations that can be counted among these 16 ‘democratically’ tied groups. [33] (A full exposition of IFEX’s ‘democratic’ links will be outlined in my forthcoming article Polyarchy and the Public Sphere.)

Finally, it is also important to point out that Democracy Award winner, Kavi Chongkittavorn, serves on the executive board of the International Press Institute (IPI). [34] This affiliation is indicative of Chongkittavorn’s ‘democratic’ credentials, as IPI is not only an IFEX member, but this group’s interests have historically been closely aligned with those of American foreign policy elites, as in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the IPI actively opposed UNESCO’s proposed New World Information and Communication Order. [35] This is significant because in 2000 IPYS was awarded the IPI’s Free Media Pioneer Award: an award which is cosponsored by Freedom Forum, which provides a further clue as to the political nature of the award, as emeritus chair of Freedom House, Bette Bao Lord, is also a trustee of the Freedom Forum. Similarly, Allen H. Neuharth, the founder of Freedom Forum, is also a member of the advisory board of the World Press Freedom Committee.

IPYS Venezuela through it ongoing demonization of Chavez’s media policies is currently fulfilling a vital role in the US-led war on Venezuelan democracy. This should be even more worrisome for progressive activists as the NED notes IPYS “has become an authoritative voice on freedom of expression issues in Venezuela, and is a point of reference for journalists, academics and human rights defenders.”[36] So while it is hardly likely that corporate media outlets will ever view the work of ‘media freedom’ groups like IPYS with skepticism, it is vital that all people concerned with freedom and democracy work to expose the insidious nature of their anti-democratic work.

First and foremost, to counter the negative influence of the ‘democracy promoting’ establishment on nongovernmental organizations (like IPYS or Human Rights Watch) it is crucial that progressive citizens committed to a participatory democracy work to develop alternate funding mechanisms for sustaining grassroots activism. Then perhaps as James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer (2001) observe in their seminal book, Globalization Unmasked, progressive NGOs and activists will be able to “systematically criticize and critique the ties of their colleagues with imperialism and its local clients, their ideology of adaptation to neoliberalism, and their authoritarian and elitist structures.” [37] As they go on to note, it is vitally important that progressive NGOs encourage their less progressive counterparts “to get out of the foundation/government networks and go back to organizing and educating their own people in Europe and North America to form socio-political movements that can challenge the dominant regimes and parties that serve the banks and the [Transnational Corporations].” This is certainly no small order, but it is certainly one that will better enable concerned citizens all over the world to promote participatory democracy rather than polyarchy.

Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia. He can be reached at Michael.J.Barker [at] griffith.edu.au

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

In a fantastic piece of essay journalism, George Packer of the New Yorker charts conservatism's fall from Nixon's astute ability to bottle Southern hatred and Northern working class cultural anxieties into a dominant political movement to its slaughter in the horror show that is Iraq.

Much of Packer's analysis dissects the inability of conservative Republicans to create a new ethos and to push policies that can galvanize excitement among Americans frustrated by wage inequality and who have learned supply side economics offers them nothing. This intellectual malaise has, fittingly, led to conservative cannibalism among the movement's most prized brain trusts: the Catholic conservative National Review and the Jewish neoconservative Commentary.

Last year, writing in The New Republic, Sam Tanenhaus revealed a 1997 memo in which Buckley--who had originally hired Brooks at National Review on the strength of a brilliant undergraduate parody that he had written of Buckley--refused to anoint him as his heir because Brooks, a Jew, is not a "believing Christian." At Commentary, the neoconservative counterpart to National Review, the editorship was bequeathed by Norman Podhoretz, its longtime editor, to his son John, whose crude op-eds for the New York Post didn't measure up to Commentary's intellectual past. A conservative journalist familiar with both publications said that what mattered most at the Christian National Review was doctrinal purity, whereas at the Jewish Commentary it was blood relations: "It's a question of who can you trust, and it comes down to religious fundamentals."

LOS ANGELES--Should the news media be patriotic? When a journalist uncovers a government secret, which comes first--national security or the public's right to know?

In the United States, reporters consider themselves Americans first, journalists second. That means consulting the government before going public with a state secret. "When I was at ABC," James Bamford told Time in 2006, "we always checked with the Administration in power when we thought we had something of concern, and there was usually some way to work it out."

In a new book about the Bush Administration's efforts to expand the president's powers at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches, the assumption that the press shouldn't publish security-sensitive stories is so hard-wired that New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau accepts it as a given. But it's a very American concept, and one that relies on the presumption that the U.S. government may make mistakes, but is largely a force for good. In other countries, the relationship between rulers and the press is strictly adversarial.

In "Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice" Lichtblau unwittingly relates a depressing parable--his seeming obliviousness to conflict of interest is a bummer--describing the nation's most prominent newspaper's willingness to keep secrets for government officials, who turn out to be (shocker alert·) lying. It's a cautionary tale about journalistic nationalism, one of many (Judith Miller, anyone?) in which the Times transformed itself into Bush's political slut.

A whore, at least, would have demanded money.

In 2004 Lichtblau and fellow Times reporter Jim Risen learned that the National Security Agency was spying domestically, on American citizens. The NSA, which uses sophisticated voice-recognition software and computer programs to intercept phone calls, fax transmissions, e-mail and even bank wire transfers, was supposed to limit its activities to foreign countries. Illegally expanding beyond its Congressionally-authorized mandate, Lichtblau writes, "the NSA had essentially gained access to the biggest telecom 'switches' in the country, using the agency's data-mining technology to comb the huge trunks carrying massive volumes of traffic, in order to zero in on suspected dirty numbers and eavesdrop on them without warrants."

It was a big story. Or it would have been, had the newspaper chosen to run it when it learned of it.

Naturally, it triggered alarms in official Washington when another Times reporter called the NSA for comment. Soon the agency's director, General Michael Hayden, was calling the Times, asking it to censor itself. "Don't run this story," Administration honchos begged.

"The Times," Lichtblau says, "had been through many contretemps in its long history over whether or not to publish newsworthy stories involving sensitive national security information and, despite the vitriolic charges from its critics, it was never a decision the paper made with reckless abandon. In more than a few cases, it has decided not to publish anything at all."

Suckers.

For over a year, Lichtblau explains in an apparent attempt to justify himself and his employer to conservative critics, Times editors and reporters met repeatedly with White House officials to ask them why they shouldn't spill the beans on the NSA's domestic spying operation. That the program was illegal was pretty obvious. (Congress acknowledged as much by later voting to retroactively legalize it.) So was the lameness of the government's argument against making the NSA's activities public.

Declaring the Bush Administration "unpersuasive," Lichtblau said: "To me, it was never clear what Osama bin Laden and his henchmen would learn--confirming, really--that the United States spy services were listening to them." But the White House kept calling meetings, playing for time. Meanwhile, every morning, the Times came out without important news that its readers would care about--that their phone calls and e-mails were being monitored.

"Bush and ten senior advisors in the White House and the intelligence community would make personal pleas not to run the story in a series of meetings spanning 14 months, beginning in October of 2004 weeks before the presidential election," Lichtblau says.

Weeks before the presidential election. You'd think the timing of the Administration's pleas for self-censorship might have tipped off the Times' editors that they were being used in order to ensure that Bush and the Republican Party won the election. Moreover, Lichtblau wrote, "We had reason to suspect that the White House was actively misleading us and that its impassioned pleas might have less to do with concern over national security harm than with the legal and political fallout that the story might trigger." Gee, you think? And yet the paper's editors refused to print it.

The Bush Administration, he argues, "had not yet suffered the kind of crippling body blows to its credibility that it would [by late 2005]." Yeah, well, not really.

Remember, this was late 2004. The U.S. had invaded Iraq in March 2003, a year and a half earlier, but the WMDs had never turned up. The paper's own editorial page had been ranting on and on about the Administration's perfidy. Credibility? What credibility? Besides, it wasn't as if Bush was the first First Fibber. All presidents are serial liars. So are their subordinates. Why would the Times, or anyone else, believe them about anything?

By then, of course, Bush had won a second term. To some extent, he owed his victory to the "liberal" New York Times more than to Karl Rove. The Times, Extra! Magazine reported later, had also sat on another late-breaking "October Surprise" story that might have caused enough voters to change their minds to vote for Democrat John Kerry in 2004. That suspicious rectangular bulge in Bush's jacket during his debate with Kerry, a NASA scientist who is an expert on such things had told the Times, was indeed an electronic transmitter that allowed Bush to receive remote coaching from Rove or someone else.

"A Times journalist, who said that Times staffers were 'pretty upset' about the killing of the story, claims the senior editors felt [it] was 'too close' to the election to run such a piece," reported Extra!.

The government doesn't tell the truth to reporters, even on "background." Why shouldn't the media tell the truth to the American people?

(Ted Rall is the author of the book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.)